


in the blue hours of morning

by ineachandeveryway



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26242906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineachandeveryway/pseuds/ineachandeveryway
Summary: He’s spent years coming back to a bed he can call his own, but it feels nice, to be held. To lie flush with someone else in the earliest hours, in the quiet of the world./ Or, Ed and Winry in the hours before dawn, at various points in their lives.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell
Comments: 39
Kudos: 113





	1. homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> I have a running playlist for these two, and one of my favorites tracks is ["In the Blue Hours of Morning"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdxhs4TVAJY) by The Oh Hellos. It's an instrumental track with an ambiance that really emulates the quiet and peace in those hours you experience before daybreak, and given Ed and Winry's odd sleeping habits, I thought it would make a good excuse for a drabble series covering the subtler moments in their lives. 
> 
> As always, comments are appreciated, and I hope you enjoy!

It’s not really a premeditated choice, catching the last train back to Resembool on a late autumn night. 

He’s supposed to show up on the Rockbells’ doorstep the following afternoon, in time for an anniversary visit to the burned-down house on the hill, but something about the stagnancy and quiet of being alone compels him. Ed forgoes the reservation he’d made in Meox and opts for catching the last northbound train, figuring that with the layover in East City, he’ll be there by early morning. 

It’s an hour or so before daybreak when he finally makes it back, joints aching from being slouched in the corner of a tram car for so long. He notices the lights off in every room as he approaches the house, and it’s strange, not hearing the mechanical sounds so typical of Winry’s all-nighters. The business sign she usually has propped up out front is nowhere to be found either, and when he unlocks the door and walks inside, every nook and cranny that he can see seems cleaner than when he ever left it. 

The door to Pinako’s room is shut while the door to Winry’s room is ajar, and Ed knows there’s only one other place that Winry could be, so when he finds her tucked into the covers of his bed instead of fallen asleep somewhere in her workshop, he startles. 

Her hair’s mussed up about her face, tangles of it covering her mouth and cheeks as she barely breathes. Ed smiles to himself a little and pulls up a chair, then tries to clear the strands away so that he can look at her properly. When her eyes shutter, he murmurs quietly, “Hey, you.”

“Hey. You’re back early.”

Her voice is a little groggy, and she leans into his touch, pulling up a hand from under the covers to cover his own. He can tell that she’s not quite up just yet, what with the way she burrows into the pillows and lets a small sigh escape her. 

“You stay here,” he says, rubbing his thumb along her cheek, “I’ll sleep downstairs.” He stands up to get a change of clothes from the closet, but not before Winry’s hand latches onto his wrist, pulling him backward. 

“You can sleep here, y’know,” she says, sounding more awake. “‘S cold.”

Ed turns around and cocks an eyebrow, teasing. “Did I miss something? Are we married yet?” 

He’s hardly forgotten the implications of what he confessed to her at the train station about a year ago, and the thought of it all coming to fruition suddenly makes him feel very affectionate. He lets Winry roll her eyes and tug him back to where she is, until she’s got both of his wrists in her hands and is sitting up on her knees so she can meet him nearly at eye level. She blinks slowly at him past sleep crusted eyes. 

“I just said that it’s cold,” she says, smiling. “I’m not asking you to scandalize Granny or anything.” His brows go up at that last bit, and she laughs, pulling him in closer. He doesn’t know how to look anywhere else, even if she's half-asleep. There’s something about the peace and content laden in every contour of Winry’s face that draws him in, like the Earth to the Sun. 

Ed leans forward and drops a kiss into her hair. “Go back to sleep,” he murmurs, “I’ll be there in a minute.” She looks at him suspiciously when he steps back and lets go, only slipping under the covers when he stays in the room to change.  As he strips down to the basics, he thinks back to the cleanliness of the house; to the stored away business sign; to the small stack of ingredients he saw on the kitchen counter before he went upstairs; to the presence of Winry in his bedroom the night before he was supposed to come home. 

He thinks about the way her hands clung to his wrists, and her eyes to his. Like the Earth to the Sun. A pull that he can't deny. 

When he climbs into bed, she yelps at the metal contact. His arm wraps around her midriff as his legs tangle with hers, and he moves his head into the crook of her neck. They’ve never slept like this together, but it all feels familiar. Like molded lines and angles, and leaning into comfort’s touch. 

He’s spent years coming back to a bed he can call his own, but it feels nice, to be held. To lie flush with someone else in the earliest hours, in the quiet of the world. He doesn’t need to say anything to get that sentiment across. Winry shifts a little in his arms and turns to face him, eyes open. 

“Hey, there, Alchemy Freak. Welcome home.” 


	2. exchange

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He remembers the cushioned crackle of her voice, the way he strained his ear close to the receiver to catch it. Her voice over the phone was only a shadow of the real thing, and it made him ache. He always missed her more after those few conversations, a dull weight settling in his chest after he hung up the calls. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There isn't going to be any sort of chronological order to these drabbles, they'll be posted entirely at random. 
> 
> Also! I had to do some research regarding telephone operations in Europe in the early 1900s, and it seems that generally, as the use of telephone networks increased, so, too, did the need for automatic exchange systems wherein all that was required of the user was dialing the direct telephone number, rather than being directed to an operator first who would then connect the call. The only thing is that in the research I did, there was mostly a stress on these systems being used at the national level, so I assumed international calls at the time still required operators and connection between more than one exchange system to facilitate distance. With regards to phone numbers, they tended to follow an alphanumeric system wherein the first three letters had some reference to the city or local network in question, and the latter four numbers directed to the specific address. This all probably sounds like absolutely useless jargon to you, but it was actually kind of fascinating to research. [Here](https://www.jstor.org/stable/44613654)'s a JSTOR article I was particularly enthralled by. 
> 
> As always, comments are appreciated, and I hope you enjoy!

It’s always a little strange to talk to Winry over the phone. 

Resembool is a rural farming town, and Ed has always been used to the slow and steady passage of letters between people. He remembers the dusted shoe box Pinako laid in his hands after the Promised Day, filled with haphazardly penned letters from Hohenheim to his wife. There’s little courage in him still to have the heart to go through them, but he thinks he understands the sentiment now, and the necessity. 

Letters are their way of connection, of longing. He feels it sometimes when he writes letters to Winry, when there’s so much he has to say and only so many pieces of paper to say it in. It’s an art in and of itself, and he's steadily improved, even if sending the letters away still makes him tremble. 

The concept of talking to her over the phone is different, though, albeit similarly daunting. He’s only done it a few times before, back when he and Al were still in the military, and Winry was doing her work study in Rush Valley. He remembers the cushioned crackle of her voice, the way he strained his ear close to the receiver to catch it. Her voice over the phone was only a shadow of the real thing, and it made him ache. He always missed her more after those few conversations, a dull weight settling in his chest after he hung up the calls. 

Ed abandons the thought and parses through the pages of his pocket book, settling on an alphanumeric written in red about halfway through. It’s his first time trying to call internationally, and he’s hazy on the details. The liberties of automatic exchange systems are still ones only exercised within national, regional, and local networks. To make a call from outside the country, he has to go the old fashioned way and ask for the help of an operator. 

He picks up the receiver and spins the rotary dial as told by the inn’s hostess earlier that morning. The dial tone pulses at his ear for a moment before a low, lumbering voice answers on the other end. 

“Connection?” says a man slowly. 

“To Amestris. South Area. Rush Valley. 1-5-4-3.”

“No need to tell me the city, boy, province is just fine. You’ll be connected to the Fotcett exchange, and they’ll handle you from there. I presume you know the letters to that first part.” 

Ed’s cheeks flush, and he answers quietly, “Yes, sir. My apologies.” 

“No need. Have a good night, son.” 

The line drops out into static, and he waits until another operator answers, asking him the same question. He makes sure to properly recount the letters in the alphanumeric from before, though considering he’s been connected to a regional Amestrian exchange, it’s not like identifying Rush Valley would be difficult. The process is new, and a little more complex than the dial-and-done of local Amestrian calls, but he doesn’t mind it too much. Winry sent him a letter with the phone number just two weeks ago, asking him to give her a call over at Garfiel’s if he had the chance. 

When he finally hears her voice on the other end, a bit tired from weariness, he laughs. “Sorry, bad time?” The time difference between Table City and Rush Valley is around four hours. It’s past midnight where he is, but not quite morning where she is either. 

“I guess that depends,” Winry muses. He can hear a smile behind the words. “I just finished up a few projects for tomorrow—today.” There’s a pause on her end, and he pictures her coiling the wire around her fingers in deep thought. “I didn’t think you’d call,” she says finally, voice so soft he can barely catch it. 

“I’m an academic, aren’t I? I know how to work phones.” 

“You know what I mean, Ed. You never really called before.” Though it isn’t an accusation, he hears the hurt in her voice. The distance between them is something Winry has always understood, but she’s been open about not liking it, too, sometimes. Their experiences as children have permanently shaped them, making bearing the distance a demand, but an oft unsettling one, for fear of no return. He knows what waiting for them to get their bodies back must have felt like. He's worded apologies in his head over and over, unsure of how he ought to convey that he's forever indebted to her for the work she did in those years, though incredibly sorry, too. 

“I don’t like to call home because it makes missing you a pain in the ass,” he admits, not mulling on the words so much. He thinks about the way his heart clenched a bit when she first picked up, when he heard her voice filter through the static, easy on his ears, and he thought to himself about the train schedule tucked into the outer pocket of his suitcase.

Being around Winry is a little like following the trajectory of a rolling snowball—he starts off in one place and ends up at another, mere seconds passing in between. There's no logical way to chart the path that his emotions take, and he's long since stopped trying. 

Winry starts to snort on the other end of the line before cutting herself off abruptly. He can’t tell if it’s on account of making sure Garfiel doesn’t wake up, or because she doesn’t want to give Ed the satisfaction of knowing that he made her laugh. He can’t help the way that he smiles behind the palm of his hand, and he covers his mouth stupidly, knowing she can’t see him anyway. 

“I’m serious,” he insists, sounding a little boyish, a little longing. “Letters are great, but hearing your voice, it’s. . . it’s something else. The phones don’t really do it justice.” 

“Mhmm.” 

He burrows his head into the cradle of his arms, the wood of the front desk cool and hard against his forehead. There’s nothing else said on either end for a while, the pair of them relishing in static and the closeness facilitated by telephone exchange systems. The distance is tangible and non-existent all at once. He desperately wants to go home and feel her tucked into his arms, hear the full shape of her voice unfurl at the shell of his ear. 

“You still there?” Ed asks after a while, unsure if she’s fallen asleep. 

“I’m still here.” 

He smiles again. “So say something.” 

“Okay. I miss you, too.”


	3. repair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These limbs are parts of him she can fix, after all. There is no broken arm a man ever has to live with if his arm simply doesn’t exist. Ed has persisted through horrors beyond both of their imaginations, but he’s always come back to her in the end, ready to be repaired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finals are over, so here's a bit of a longer chapter to tide things over. I was really interested by the fact that, as long as Ed has an automail arm, it can be fixed or remade countless times; after the Promised Day, however, his arm is obviously whole, but that also means it's irrevocably human, and I wondered if Winry might dwell on that more than the average person. The inner workings of her mind tend to intrigue me in general. 
> 
> Also: there's not really any chronological timeline or continuity to these chapters, as they're just drabbles. You can also assume my other works for the fandom are separate of what occurs in here, because these ideas just kind of come out of nowhere and in some cases may even tend to be a bit outlandish. 
> 
> Either way, comments are appreciated as always, and I hope you enjoy! All my love to Amy (coerulus) for beta-ing.

The first few days after they come back, she doesn’t know how to look at it. 

It’s different when he first steps onto her porch, and the length of his arm is hidden by the sleeve of his sweatshirt. The fingers on his hand—real flesh—are something she barely registers as she topples him and Al to the ground and lets tears streak down her face. The only thought that runs through her head in that moment is _they’re home, they’re home, they’re home,_ and all else that might demand her attention simply vanishes. 

Hours later, though, when the sweatshirt comes off and he pads around the house in one of his sleeveless tees, she stutters. There’s no metal plating attached to the joint at his shoulder; the pink scar tissue there blends into lightly tanned skin drawn taught over bones, and her eyes linger as they draw a path from shoulder to elbow to wrist. The palm of his hand is clean, skin soft. 

It startles her. 

Winry meets him in the hallway halfway and flinches, lost for words when he asks her if she’s alright. “I’m fine,” she murmurs. “Just tired. It’s been a long day.” 

Ed smiles, content, and then he does something unexpected, drawing her into his arms and fitting her head into the crook of his neck. His arms come around her, one at the small of her back and the other just behind her shoulder as he sifts real fingers through her hair. The warmth of the touch has her frozen in place, even as he says simply, “Get some sleep, okay?” and lets go. 

When he walks past her she remembers that he’s still got an automail limb, one that he hasn’t quite broken in in the same way but that nonetheless demands her attention on occasion. And it’s not that she needs him to be made up of automail to feel needed, but somehow having him come back to her every other month for the last five years with broken automail is something she’s gotten used to. 

These limbs are parts of him she can fix, after all. There is no broken arm a man ever has to live with if his arm simply doesn’t exist. Ed has persisted through horrors beyond both of their imaginations, but he’s always come back to her in the end, ready to be repaired. 

He may not be leaving to save the country anymore, but she doesn’t quite know how to handle the present absence of that reality. A human body, she remembers, can be broken in more ways than one. A step closer to being whole also means a step closer to potential of breakage, and that thought settles into her like a deadweight. 

Ed calls from behind her, “G’night,” but she doesn’t move. 

Winry can hardly muster up the effort to give him an answer. All sees is the flesh of an old limb made new, there to twist and bend and sever at the joints. The sight of skin over bones has never scared her so much in her life. 

It’s all she thinks about as she tries to fall asleep. 

* * *

“There’s something wrong with it, isn’t there?” 

Winry looks up from where she has her hands placed on Ed’s arm, thumbs pressing gently on either side of the bones in his forearm. He’s set up in her examinee’s chair in the upstairs workshop, sleeves rolled up as far as they can go. For once, there are no gloves between them, just the pressure of Winry’s callused fingers on Ed’s skin. The muscle development in his arm is improving nicely, is one of the reasons Ed was released at all from the hospital in Central, because he had to promise first that he would stick to the physical therapy regimen. 

This is all protocol they’ve followed before, if a bit differently, when he was first getting used to using her automail to navigate the world. Every other day, he sits in this chair so she can check for bruises and strain, and how his right arm measures up to his left one in build and size. He and Al have a competition between them, too, to see which one of them can fill out all of the way first. 

Ed is normally someone restless to get the work done, but he’s patient now when she hovers over him, body held still under her lightly probing touch. The brothers have all the time in the world to heal, competition or no, and it’s a comfort they’re both cognizant of and do their best to afford her. Winry can never tell them that it’s simply not enough. 

“It’s fine,” she answers, moving away from him. “I just got lost in thought.” 

Ed frowns, and his brow furrows. “You’re doing a lot of that lately.” 

“Am I?”

“More than usual, anyway.” 

“Maybe you’ve just never been around enough to see it.” 

Winry turns away before she has to look him in the eye, and behind her Ed opens his mouth to say something but ultimately thinks better of it. He stands up and slowly rolls his sleeves down, eyes fixed on her all the while in a curious stare. 

“Didn’t you agree to help the Müllers with their harvest today?” she asks, itching to move the conversation in any other direction. The harvest season began just a few weeks ago, and though it’s been several years since anyone in the Rockbell or Elric families tended to a crop, Ed offered to help a few neighbors short on hands. 

“Just for a couple of hours.” 

“Alright, then.” 

She has to turn around and get past him to exit the room, and as she does so, their eyes meet. There’s confusion in the gold of his irises that she doesn’t dare encourage, gently pushing past him to make it out the door before he starts questioning her in earnest. 

Winry gets the feeling that she looks like one of his equations right now, there and free to solve but nonetheless barring desired answers. Never mind that Ed is the type to pursue solutions tirelessly and may well try to will the words out of her. There’s no room in her psyche for processing what being judged by him feels like, let alone the aftermath of that sentiment. 

Her bedroom door closes behind her as Ed goes down the stairs, and she falls into bed, a strange exhaustion suddenly pummeling her. The clock has hardly struck noon, but Winry lays there haphazard, thinking about the weight of his arm under her hands, twice that of the automail limb that used to rest in its place. 

Nobody wakes her up for hours and hours. 

* * *

The clock on her wall ticks meticulously through every hour of the day; evening passes, then midnight, and now the machine works its way slowly up towards dawn, Winry fast asleep in the mess of her sheets as two weeks of fitful sleep are finally granted reprieve. She doesn’t notice the door give way with a quiet creak as someone steps inside, doesn’t notice Ed shuffle to her bed side and set something down on the table. 

It’s only when his hand brushes strands of hair off of her cheek, gentle and un-callused fingers meeting pale, wet skin, that she startles into wakefulness. Winry flinches with alarm under his human touch, jumping back an inch. 

Ed’s face doesn’t give away much by way of reaction. His mouth is set in the usual downturned frown he saves for puzzling out a problem, but then she notices that the lines around his eyes are a little softer. His hand hovers in front of her, and he looks concerned. 

“I brought you soup,” he says lamely. “You didn’t have dinner.” 

“You could have woken me up.” 

“You were asleep.”

“And I wasn’t asleep right now?” she asks petulantly, knowing there’s no real reason to be arguing with him at this hour, but spitting words out without thought anyway because it’s all she can manage to muster. Winry processes the fact that his voice has remained quiet and level the entire time, that the patience from her workshop has potential to carry over into moments like this, too. It unsettles her. 

“I was up with Granny, so I thought I’d bring you some,” he finishes, taking the bowl from the table and holding out a spoonful of broth, waiting. Winry unfurls a little from her scrunched-up position and sits up, then leans forward. As her mouth opens, Ed gently pushes the spoon inside, waiting for her to take it all in before retreating. He’s careful in a way that makes it feel practiced, and Winry thinks about how Trisha died when he was five years old and Al was four, and all of the things about parenthood that he learned as just a child. 

True, he was always a little louder and more brash than his younger brother, but Ed had his moments, too. He could be gentle. 

“You’re not going to ask what’s wrong with me?” she asks, because right now, gentle sounds good, sounds like something she could use. 

Ed considers the question for a bit, helping her with a few more spoonfuls in the silence. The lines of his mouth downturn a fraction further, and eventually, he holds the bowl closer to his chest and looks at her with this pained expression that she’s learned all too well how to read, because she’s seen it directed at Al for almost half of her life. 

“I don’t ask you enough about things,” he says tentatively, “and I don’t want you to feel like I think I’m entitled to it. I’m not.” 

“You’ve known me since before we could speak,” she answers quietly, “I think you’re entitled to it.” 

“Okay.” 

“Okay.” 

He offers her another spoonful, and she takes it, if a bit haphazardly, letting some of it dribble from one corner of her mouth until his thumb comes up to wipe it away and onto the fabric of his pants. She’s got no time to process what a gesture like that means coming from him, either, so instead Winry does what is easier in this moment and what feels like will finally get this silly, stupid weight off of her chest after it’s been building there for weeks: she rambles. 

“I don’t mind that you got your arm back,”—Ed makes a sound in his throat, evidently unprepared for this turn in the conversation—“I wanted you to get your arm back, so badly, and I thought about it all the time, and how happy I would be the day it happened, and then you made it here and the jacket came off, and I thought to myself, he’s not ever going to come back here again because he needs it fixed. If anything happens to his arms again, I can’t do anything about it. 

“And I’m not saying that because it makes me feel useless, okay? It’s not about me. It’s about you and your stupid hero brain and you not knowing how to sit still, and the thought scares the shit out of me now because what if you come home and I can’t fix you? What am I supposed to do then? I don’t know. It’s stupid because you’ve had another arm this entire time and if you can keep _that_ intact then doing the same with the other one shouldn’t be a problem. 

“But I’m an automail mechanic, and you’re _family_ ,” she finishes, crumbling under the weight of the words, making a quiet, strangled sort of sound just as Ed drops the bowl onto the table and leans forward to take her fully into his arms, hands clasped at her back and the nape of her neck in that familiar gesture from the first night after they made it back. 

At some point, he ends up on the bed with her, seated awkwardly near the edge of it while he wraps around her like a cocoon, and it’s nice. It’s been a long time since someone held her like that, and Winry realizes that it’s always been Ed to do so, because Pinako was a little too small to hold her all the way around and with Al, the circumstances were different. (He hugs her often now, though, really tightly like the opportunity might escape him at any moment, and sometimes if he’s feeling particularly strong, he twirls her, too.) 

Ed only speaks up after a while, and they’re words he whispers into the pillow of her hair at her left ear: “You’re kind of stupid, y’know?” 

“ _Wow_ —” 

He laughs and holds her in place as she tries to tunnel her way out of his arms, placating her with a followed up and murmured, “It’s cute.” That gets a scoff and some sniffles out of her, and Winry continues to push against him, acting like she’s trying to escape his hold when both of them know that she just wants to readjust. Her eyes feel puffy and her nose is runny, but it feels good to burrow into the warmth of his shirt and just sit there, contemplating. 

“If I promise not to break my arm,” he says a few minutes later, when the light of the sun’s started to peek out above the horizon, “will it make you feel better?” 

Winry briefly mulls over the question. “Maybe.” 

“I’m not going anywhere, y’know. Not for a while.” 

“I know.” 

“So what’s the worry?” 

“I’m stupid. You make me stupid.” 

Ed holds her tighter to him. “Yeah, yeah, I do.”


	4. you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The two of them grow used to each other’s company in a new light, the quiet creak of her automail joints paired to the backdrop of him almost silently turning a new page. It’s a synergy of existence that she thinks they’ve been searching for for a long time, and she doesn’t know how to put into words that she’s grateful for it. Instead, the thought sits at the back of her mind, festering, as all things in her mind are inevitably fated to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a portion of this fic centered on the concept of county fairs. If it were like the second chapter where such an obscure topic was the actual focus of the fic, I would probably attempt to be way more accurate about it, but alas, it's merely a side plot. Please forgive me if there are any inaccuracies; I, too, am from a small, somewhat-farming-adjacent town, and I feel your pain of being lamentably misunderstood. Unfortunately, I am just not actually a farm girl at heart. (I will try to be if a future chapter ever covers rural agriculture more substantially, though.) 
> 
> As always, comments are appreciated, and I hope you enjoy! This is probably the last time I'll be updating for a while, since school is starting up again. All my love to Amy (coerulus) for beta-ing. (I hope the last-minute additions surprise you.)

It isn’t until Ed and Al come back for good that Winry realizes how cooped up in her workshop she tends to be. It’s easier for several hours to go by without disturbance when the only other person in the house is her grandmother, who’s usually out and about on several house visits anyway. Pinako Rockbell is a restless woman despite her age, and she figures there is more to gain in life by way of maintaining an active routine than resigning herself to ever incumbent senility. 

The days in their corner of the world are now punctuated by all kinds of movement and noise, new sounds outside of the standard twist of automail per wrenches and screws. Al is still a little slow on his feet, recovery of his body and mind biding its time, but Ed thunders around the house like he never left it. He tinkers and cooks and paces and reads, and it doesn’t quite drive Winry mad, as she’s got her own space of sanity to retreat to still, but it is different. 

Ed only dares to bother her on rare occasions, when she hasn’t been downstairs the entire day, and Al or research or whatever else it is that he gets up to hasn’t managed to make him sit still for longer than an hour. There’s rarely an acknowledgement on her end when he enters the room, she’s so inexorably focused, but usually he pads up to her side and ruffles her hair or quietly asks if she’d like to come down to dinner. 

The practice feels oddly marital, but she doesn’t comment on that, nor on the way he sometimes decides to stay there with her all through the night, propped up on a chair with a dusted book held over his knees. 

The two of them grow used to each other’s company in a new light, the quiet creak of her automail joints paired to the backdrop of him almost silently turning a new page. It’s a synergy of existence that she thinks they’ve been searching for for a long time, and she doesn’t know how to put into words that she’s grateful for it. Instead, the thought sits at the back of her mind, festering, as all things in her mind are inevitably fated to do.

A few months into the brothers’ stay, early August eking out the last stretches of a brutal summer, the time finally arrives for Winry to prepare for the county fair. It’s an extravagant event, perhaps one of the best chances for residents of Resembool to come together and share in what they’ve made of the land and its produce and material. The addition of a plot for automail mechanics to display their work is fairly recent, something pushed for by Winry and eased into acceptance per every Resembool man’s utter respect for her grandmother. 

Pinako smirks and watches her granddaughter move like a whirlwind around the house, legs carrying her back and forth between the workshop upstairs and the living room down below, where other mechanics drop by to sort out set-up protocol and schedule. It’s a routine of daily activity that the brothers are complete strangers to, and they watch quietly with widened eyes as their childhood friend somehow ascends to yet another level of self-made authority. 

Ed drops by with less frequency as such, slipping in only to make sure she eats her fill. There’s a look that he gives her sometimes while he waits for her to register the plate of food on her desk, but Winry can never think about it long enough to care. Her mind spins with checklists and automail parts and stall design in an ever increasing frenzy as they approach the last days of August. 

The night before the event, or the day of, if she wants to be technical, she still sits at her desk, finalizing the new carbon-based plating on a set of fingers. The clock is a figment of her imagination at that point, its hands working their way to a time that would mortify her to acknowledge. Winry attempts to hold herself as steadily as possible while she works in the screws, and her shoulders ache with the pain of being perpetually hunched over for hours. 

By the time the whole thing’s said and done, screws all in place and the full limb quickly looked over, she doesn’t have the energy to move. The hardback of the chair is uncomfortable on her shoulder blades, but she leans on it and dips her head slightly back over the top, closing her eyes. A few minutes later, someone’s hands touch her face, and she looks up to see Ed staring quietly back at her. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks, the words slow and somewhat garbled around a yawn. 

Ed comes around the other side of the chair until he’s in front of her, and then he takes hold of her hands and pulls, gently righting her to a standing position. The tips of his fingers linger in hers as he answers, “Just wanted to make sure you got to bed, you know, since sleeping in this thing’s such a pain in the ass.” He gestures lamely to the chair with a pointed thumb. 

“That it is,” Winry smiles, laughing a little. “Thanks.” 

Ed’s eyes rove over the table behind them, the space cluttered with an assortment of limb standees and their respective display pieces, polished and shined by her to the point of exhaustion. There’s one piece which she’s sure he can tell is an exact replica of the arm that he used to have, and that’s not exactly a topic that she’s managed to address with him yet, but he doesn’t look off-put. His arm is to this day her most reputable piece of work, a result of evolution and progress difficult to accomplish by someone her age, but nonetheless achieved. She’s proud of it. 

Ed turns back to her and asks, “Everything good for tomorrow?” 

The past several hours she’s spent toiling away in the workshop are still a fixation in her mind, and she starts to ramble, naming clients and parts she’s been working on and the plethora of issues that inevitably came up. Her work is something she’s never had much opportunity to talk about outside of the small sphere she shares with Pinako (and on her occasional trips to Rush Valley), and it’s hard not to let loose when prompted. Listening to Ed and Al wax rhetoric about alchemy has always been the priority because it’s been at the apex of saving their world; but automail mechanics are important to her, and she likes the sound of the associated words in her mouth. 

Winry is in the middle of murmuring tired gibberish about Erna Schmidt and her reckless son, who can’t seem to grasp the importance of positioning stalls with livestock far away from the ones for automail display, when Ed cups her face and brings his mouth down to hers. 

There’s a tremor that travels through her at the touch, and she holds her hands alight, unsure of where to place them. The gesture is quick and he leans back after a few seconds, lips parted and eyes hooded. He looks entirely calm and in control, and the fact of that intrigues her more than anything, especially when his gaze dips down to the part of her mouth again. 

Dazed, Winry murmurs, “What was that for?” 

Ed bows his head a little and smiles. “You were talking too much,” he says, but it doesn’t come out accusatory like it has so many times in the past, when petty arguments between them felt like the natural prerogative. Instead, his voice is level, and he sounds almost endeared, like after all of this time he’s somehow finally managed to recognize that he likes the sound of her rambling about anything and everything. 

The thought makes Winry still for a moment, but then she goes back to the fact of him cutting her off regardless, and she levels him with a solid pout. “About my work,” she says tentatively. “It was important.”

Evidently, something about that is funny to him, because he turns his face to the side and laughs in that way that only he can when it comes to her. “I’m not saying it’s not important,” he replies seconds later, as his eyes fall back to hers, affection and amusement and desire all pooled into one loaded stare. His hands are on her face again, and he gently brushes away grease stains from her cheeks with his thumbs. 

“Just that I’d rather talk to you about other things”—Winry raises a brow, and he amends—“at this hour.” His hands are tending to her in earnest now, grease stains being smudged away, stray strands of hair being smoothed down or tucked back into place. It’s a tenderness that she remembers vividly from childhood, when her parents died in Ishval and for the first time in his life, Ed chose willingly to be gentle with her. 

Revelation after revelation unfolds itself in her mind, and Winry loses herself to thought and quiet reflection as she asks absentmindedly, “Oh, yeah, like what?” Everything feels a little hazy suddenly, and she’s not sure if it’s from the exhaustion of staying up until four in the morning or the fact that his hands on her face feel equal parts stimulating and soothing. 

“I don’t know. You.” 

A quiet snort escapes her. “I _was_ talking about me,” she says, triumphant, but Ed just shakes his head like she’s had it all wrong from the start. 

“I don’t mean you talking about what you do for other people,” he replies, really looking her in the eye, “I mean, I love that, I love— I love that you do that, every day. But when you’ve been holed up in here for the better part of every day for a couple of weeks, I want to hear about you when it’s over. About what you’re thinking. How you’re feeling. You don’t talk enough about that.” 

At first, her mind stops processing at the part where he says, “I love—”. She turns that momentary pause and release of breath over and over in her mind, and when she thinks she’s convinced herself of what lies there in between the lines, she processes the rest. What she’s thinking. How she’s feeling. 

It’s not lost on her that she hardly sets time aside for herself; the topic is one Al brought up to her explicitly a few weeks ago, asking if all she did day and night was work on automail or cook or clean or sleep. And it wasn’t meant to judge, not when it was coming from someone so concerned as him, but Winry nonetheless felt a fraction exposed. She wonders if that’s where all of the looks from Ed over the past few months have stemmed from, an indirect concern in comparison to his more upfront brother. 

“Were you always this wordy?” she asks him, playing it safe. A grin pulls at her mouth again, but Winry stifles it, genuinely curious. Ed has always been an overwhelmingly expressive person; he’s no stranger to anger, grief, affection, yearning, fear. But where Al easily puts all of his thoughts into coherent words, she knows Ed fumbles a little. His emotions always get the better of him, and it’s only in rare moments that he somehow manages to piece together an entire paragraph’s worth of sentimental honesty. 

Secretly, though, she likes that she’s someone privy to these moments. It’s obvious that she’s not the only one, but she knows it’s a pattern with them specifically, the way they always seem to come apart in front of each other in secluded spaces. 

“You’re dodging the point,” he answers, breaking her reverie, and that coupled with every other piece of info about him she’s catalogued from this conversation finally gives her the push to be honest. It’s her turn to take his face in her hands, her turn to drop her gaze to his mouth and the parted seam. 

“I’m thinking about how you almost just said that you love me. And that you taste a little like peppermint, and it’s nice. I’m also tired, but I could really kiss you again because it feels so _nice._ Your hands, too. They’re so warm,” and the words are so simple, almost childish, but they pull him to her and the next thing she knows, their mouths are open, lips flush, tongues slick with want. 

A sound rises up in the back of her throat, almost a whine, and Winry doesn’t know how they tip-toed around each other like this for years, can’t fathom that the fine line between them was so strictly maintained when tenderness and warmth were things achievable in the grasp of each other’s arms. Ed holds her so tightly and he envelops her whole body, wraps around her like she’s meant to exist there, within him. 

For a while, Winry feels like he’s chosen to willfully ignore her earlier assessment of him in favor of everything else that’s currently happening, but then he pulls back and traces a few kisses along the right side of her jaw, murmurs matter-of-factly, “Yeah, I love you.” A smile from him rises against her skin, and he adds cheekily, “Shit.” 

When that gets a laugh out of her, he nuzzles under her jaw, makes her lips part all over again in an expectant action as his breath fans out over her neck. 

Winry shuts her eyes and wills herself to concentrate on forming words, to not think about Ed’s mouth or his tongue or his teeth that seem poised to bite. “You’re not going to ask me?” she manages to get out in a huff, and he looks up fast, clearly confused. 

“Ask you what?” 

“If I love you back.” 

And there’s something about the way he doesn’t hesitate that plunges her ten leagues deeper into being in love with him, because he gathers her up in his arms again and _says_ —doesn’t ask, “Winry Rockbell, you love me. You are so fucking in love with me, don’t even try to bullshit!” 

There’s darkness that envelops the room save for the light of a single oil lamp, and they laugh at each other in that small, yellow glow, his face pressed to hers as he starts kissing her all over again. It’s like a dam has broken and neither of them can stop, and she’s exhausted and it’s messy, but she couldn’t care less. “I do love you,” she whispers into his mouth, a quiet prayer. The fair is set to start a few hours after daybreak, but she puts it out of mind, focuses her energy on nothing but Ed and the kisses. 

It feels nice to be taken care of, after all is said and done. That’s what Sara used to tell her when she asked questions about marriage, and deciding between the two brothers was a priority, and a troubling one. Ed always found ways to take care of her, even eccentrically. 

The thought makes Winry smile, and a few minutes later, she asks against his lips, teasing, “Are you going to let me sleep?” The excitement of the moment aside, she does need rest, and there’s a long and laboring day ahead of her. Ed pulls back with a few more kisses to spare, one over her lips and then on her forehead, before his hands come around under her thighs and lift. “Yeah, gearhead. I’m not _that_ self centered,” he says, gathering her up in his arms. 

He carries her out the door in a front piggyback, and Winry takes the opportunity to press lazy kisses into his neck and blow on them, making him sway. The rest of the house is utterly quiet, Al and Pinako not yet awake for the day’s festivities, so Ed grumbles quietly until they finally reach her room. The sheets are clean—Al’s doing—and the bed made for two, and she looks at him knowingly before he can dare exit the room. Ed rolls his eyes, but in newer fashion, he relents. 

Everything here is warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this is the third chapter where they end up in a bed together. It makes sense considering these one-shots are supposed to take place in the late night hours, but I'm sure there's more places a couple of horny kids could be. Maybe I'll try for something different in the future. Who knows!


End file.
